Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Ghosts

This piece was an assignment written for the inimitable Amy Weldon in her fiction writing workshop in September, 2010. The challenge was to write about a place in stress.

Her father shooed her
toward the car like someone with a broom, trying to sweep the last bit of
crumbs and debris into the dust bin.She
had forgotten nothing, but she couldn’t leave yet.

“Hold on, Dad.I have to go check on something.”She ran back in the house before his weary
sigh of impatience could stop her.

She opened the front
door and started up the steps.Leaning
forward, she climbed the stairs the same way she did when she was a little
girl, using both her hands and feet to propel herself forward.At the top of the stairs, she straightened
and headed across the open sitting room to the door.Its paint was scratched from signs that used
to hang there; homemade proclamations to Keep
Out, Girls Only and Amy’s Room.

Pushing open the door,
she took a few shy steps inside and stared.There was nothing left.No
furniture.No books or albums or dresser
drawers filled with t-shirts and blue jeans.Only dusty impressions of posters and pictures lined the flowered wallpaper.The cork letters that spelled out her name
were gone, and so was the framed picture of Scottish cows her friend Jennifer
gave her in 10th grade.

Her desk with its notebooks
of poetry and love letters and small metal buttons and ticket stubs from
concerts had been packed away.The
closet, once so full it seemed close to exploding, stretched out endlessly.Everything, every trace of her had all been
wrapped, packed, boxed and carted down to the waiting U-Haul trailer.A few cobwebs along the baseboards in the
corners waved slightly when the door opened.But there was nothing else left to catch even the gentlest breeze.

Except for the
ghosts.She hadn’t found a packing box
big enough to fit them.Their shadowy figures
choked the room.One ghost sat on the
floor, burning incense, thinking it covered the reek of cigarettes. A younger shade rearranged furniture in her
dollhouse.One lay across the bed, lost in
a book, unperturbed by the ghost who sat next to her crying over a boy who’d
promised to love her forever. Forever came quicker than expected.She
saw a ghost in braces, and one in hot rollers practicing painting her mouth in
red lipstick.The ghosts choked the
room.She saw them all.For a moment they looked back at her.Each one said, “Stay.Wait.A few more days.A few more
minutes.Don’t go just yet.”

She tried to smile,
tilting her head to the side.Then with
a small, sad shake, she said, “I have to.”She turned and stiffened her neck so she wouldn’t look back.